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The Saints promoted Dennis Allen to head coach when Sean Payton retired after last season, mainly because the team didn’t want to change much from Payton’s regime.
Running back Mark Ingram, who is in his second stint with New Orleans, believes keeping the coaching change in-house was important for the team.
“I think that was huge, keeping the DNA the same,” Ingram said, via NewOrleansSaints.com. “It’s not like it’s a full rebuild here. I think you have a team that can make a lot of noise and make a run at it. Obviously, we have to improve and get better and gel as a unit, but I think keeping the DNA of the team, the culture of the team the same, I think that’s huge and I think we’ll all benefit from it.”
Allen spent the last seven seasons as the team’s defensive coordinator, and he was a key part of the defense’s turnaround as a top unit starting in the 2017 season.
Ingram, meanwhile, played with the Saints for eight years before leaving in free agency in 2019. He returned in the middle of last season, playing in seven games after Houston traded him to New Orleans in October. He and the team reportedly agreed to a one-year extension after the trade, keeping him in New Orleans through 2022.
Since Ingram spent so much time playing under Payton, he knows what made him such a good coach. The running back understands that Allen will do some things differently without changing the structure of what made the Saints so good for so long.
“Obviously, D.A. is different from Sean. But D.A. has done a great job of just trying to keep it as normal as possible and adding his own kind of flavor to it,” he said. “I think the defense is more used to it, because they spent so much time with him in defensive meetings. We only saw him sometimes when he had to fill in. But I like him a lot.”
